eWEEK’s Eric Lundquist is at 2010 CTIA show in Las Vegas. It’s the 25th anniversary of the show, which has turned, in his words, from an "it's like wired but slower, more complicated and more expensive" event to a showcase for the future of consumer and business digital communications and data flow. The business aspect of wireless has lagged the consumer in Lundquist’s opinion. The carriers are partly responsible in that they pursued the consumer revenues. The business execs are also partly responsible in that they never envisioned an era when 75, 80 or maybe a 100 percent of their workers and customers would operate solely in the mobile environment. Not surprisingly, Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, stated in his keynote that by 2013, 75 percent of workers will be mobile workers. With that in mind, Lundquist looks at how IT managers can take five simple steps to turn their enterprises into dynamic mobile workplaces.
of
Lundquist's Five Simple Steps to Creating a Dynamic Mobile Enterprise
by Eric Lundquist
Decide to Be a Mobile Company
This idea has to permeate the company from the top down. Recognize that your workforce will be a mobile workforce, your customers will be a mobile customer base and you will be at a strategic disadvantage if you are late to restructure your company in a mobile mode. This means rethinking your IT infrastructure, your business structure and the way your employees interact.
Think Like a Consumer
Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff really got the idea for his company when he asked, Why can't a business-to-business company have the same order flow as Amazon? Why could a customer order a book from Amazon and enjoy the experience while a business-to-business customer could spend $1 million and not know a thing about the order or be treated like a $1 million customer? More recently, Benioff has argued Facebook should be the model for business social networking apps. At the risk of inflating his ego even larger, he is right. Consumers are showing the way to deal with location, app acquisition and video information in the mobile world. Your company needs to do the same in a business setting.
Rethink Your Corporate Apps
If you are going to try to mobilize only your existing applications, you will never be a truly mobile company. Talk to your people in the field. Question how far they can present and complete an order before they get stuck in a world of fax machines, financial apps only available back at the office and inability to find and deliver inventory. You need an application development group that can find and deploy apps as easy as the mobile world. That is a challenge, but also a great opportunity.
Deploy
You need to get into the game. Yes, security, privacy and compliance are all considerations, but those issues can be addressed in a mobile environment far better now than a few years back. You need to set a deployment schedule and stick to it. By the end of the 2010, your company needs to be, what, 75 percent mobile? That would be a good goal.
Repeat
Learn from your mistakes, perfect the process and repeat, repeat, repeat. Creating a mobile company will not be without its obstacles, but the reward will be in your company's bottom line and, not incidentally, in your resume. Being the executive or IT professional who knows how to mobilize a stodgy company is job security in these uncertain times.
Windows Azure is a public cloud platform for building, hosting and scaling applications. Try Windows Azure free for 90 days and get 20GB outbound and unlimited inbound data transfer.
IT Management News & Reviews 
Cloud Data Backup Now Makes Sense for SMBs: 10 Reasons Why 
HP, Lenovo, Asus Laptops, Desktops Offer Consumer Style for Busin[..]
Microsoft`s F#: 10 Reasons Why It`s a Hot Programming Language fo[..]
Data Center Efficiency: 10 Tips to Boost Productivity, Reduce Pow[..]
iPhone Apps to Kick Off the 2012 Summer Season 
Email Security: 10 Steps for Dealing With Dangerous Messages
See All Slideshows
eWEEK’s Eric Lundquist is at 2010 CTIA show in Las Vegas. It’s the 25th anniversary of the show, which has turned, in his words, from an "it's like wired but slower, more complicated and more expensive" event to a showcase for the future of consumer and business digital communications and data flow. The business aspect of wireless has lagged the consumer in Lundquist’s opinion. The carriers are partly responsible in that they pursued the consumer revenues. The business execs are also partly responsible in that they never envisioned an era when 75, 80 or maybe a 100 percent of their workers and customers would operate solely in the mobile environment. Not surprisingly, Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, stated in his keynote that by 2013, 75 percent of workers will be mobile workers. With that in mind, Lundquist looks at how IT managers can take five simple steps to turn their enterprises into dynamic mobile workplaces.